Insurgency
by Puff of Smoke
Summary: Detailing the Cylon/Antarian Occupation of Earth, The Insurgency and the fight for Humanity's survival. Also featuring Angel and Roswell.
1. Chapter 1

Insurgency

A Journey-Verse Novel

Summary: The colonials found Earth five years ago, now the cylons have arrived. And they didn't come alone.

Disclaimer: The Kazui Conglomerate owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Moore and Syfy own BSG2003. Katims owns Roswell.

Spoilers: BtVS/Angel/Roswell – All series spoilers.

BSG2003: Spoilers up to 2x19, AU from there.

Chapter One:

_~It was in the fifth year following the accidental discovery of, and settlement by the people of the Colonial Fleet on the homeworld of the once fabled Thirteenth Tribe – Earth – That the cylons once again disturbed our period of peace. They did not come alone, and even with our new allies that came with finding Earth, against the combined forces of the Cylons, Kivar and the Circle of the Black Thorn, Humanity's survival has once more become a non-certainty. _

_The Battlestars led the rest of the fleet away upon the first arrival of our enemies, and it dampened the spirits of quite a few, leading a number of survivors to join the enemy forces. A police force known as the Earth Enforcement Agenda has formed of those who have turned their backs on us, and under the command of the Cylons, Kivar, and the Circle have been assigned to monitor and report any Insurgency activity among the survivors that have been gathered around the occupied city of Cleveland._

_With every passing day, more and more good men and women disappear under the cover of night and clandestine arrests. Hope is dwindling and if this continues for much longer, there won't be anyone left to rescue should the Fleet return. ~_

_-Former Colonial President Laura Roslin_

_(From her notes on the occupation of Earth, June 2013.)_

_~/~/~/~/~_

Faith Lehane had been a great many things in her thirty years of life.

Daughter of a heroin junkie from South Boston.

Runaway. Thief. Vampire Slayer.

Seductress. Killer. Exonerated Convict.

Fleet Enlist. Viper Pilot. Insurgent.

All in all, Faith was the survivor that she was born to be.

But never in her relatively young life had she imagined that 'Prisoner of War' would be on her resume, but that was how things were now, with the invaders running things. Kivar had shown an interest in the slayers and the other supernatural-inclined survivors of the attack, hoping to subvert them to join his faction.

Such an offer was why Faith currently found herself in an eight by ten cell beneath the occupied military base, having spit in the eye of Kivar's lieutenant Nicolas when he'd offered her and a couple of the other surviving slayers amnesty if they defected and swore fealty and alliegence to the tyrannical alien despot. The beating that had ensued would have given her old enemy Kakistos a wet dream, and ended with the bruised, bloody and half-blinded slayer tossed into what had become her home for the past.. however long it had been.

She was fairly sure that had been just about a month prior, if her mental calculations were correct, but having had no view of the sky to count the days she wasn't certain. All she knew for sure was that when she'd been taken, the invaders had been on Earth just over three months, and spent the time between then and the initial bombings gathering survivors world-wide and bringing them to Cleveland.

Of more than six billion, including the Colonial settlers that had come five years prior, the number of humans had plummeted to just about a couple hundred thousand.

Some might consider that surviving such a purge to be an incredible stroke of luck, but Faith knew better. The lucky ones had died first, and those left behind were the ones to be pitied.

She's dragged out of her internal musings and reflection at the familiar grinding sound that came with the thick metal door of her cell being opened, and warily turned her head toward the far wall as light flooded the enclosed space from the hallway and burned her now sensitive eyes.

Blinking furiously to clear and adjust her vision for a couple moments, she heard at least two people enter and turned to face them from her spot against the wall.

"What do you want now?" She rasped out, her voice having fallen into disuse from having no one to talk to for days on end.

"It has been decided by the prisoner review council, that your parole be approved." one of the trespassers in her cell speaks up, and Faith's eyes fall upon one of the Cylon Number fours.

"Ya don't say?" the formerly dark Slayer intones dryly, and then looks down in front of her as the second trespasser tosses a circular device onto the concrete in front of her, and a quick examination of it reminds Faith eerily of a collar.

"There is one stipulation of your release, however." The second informs, giving the collar-esque device a pointed look, and Faith glares at him hatefully as she finally recognizes the device for what it was, a nullification collar that she'd seen on a couple of the more unruly slayers and humanoid demons prior to her arrest.

"I'd rather face an execution squad then to put that on." Faith sneers, kicking the device across the cell to bounce off the opposite wall.

"Tough shit, we're not going to be making a martyr out of you. There's enough people in your little insurgency already, and we know that killing you will only drive others to join up." Simon, the Four, intones gravely. "You can put it on yourself, or we can do it for you."

Faith's eyes met Simon's for a brief moment before falling to the Antarian version of a taser out and letting it flicker on for a moment. She pales at the sight of the crackling red energy that emanates from the 'mouth' of the taser, knowing full of its effects when applied to soft human flesh.

"Your call." The second man's voice breaks her out of her line of thought and she gives both him and the Simon a hateful look before slowly she reaches out and grabs up the collar. A couple moments later she secures it shut around her throat with a metallic click that echoes low through the small enclosure.

Almost immediately she can feel her slayer strength diminish and her enhanced senses flee her, giving her little to fight back with as the pair stride over to her, and reach down to grip her by the arms. They pull her to her feet and forcibly guide her out of the cell, the danger she'd posed to them now reduced to little more than that of an average unarmed human.

Ten minutes later they had dragged her through the improvised detention center and more or less tossed her out the front doors, her malnourished body stumbling and she falls to her knees in the dirt, sending pain shooting up her thighs from the jarring impact.

"Faith!" She hears someone yell out and slowly she drags her head up to see one of the other slayers rushing over from where an outdoor marketplace had been set up in the human camp outside the invader's base, recognizing her as Lt. Kasey 'Tailspin' Fitzpatrick, one of the other Fleet trained Slayer-Pilots. To her dismay, Kasey is also fitted with a control collar as had been forced on Faith just minutes earlier.

"Thank god you're alive." Kasey exclaims as the smaller slayer skids to a stop in front of Faith, and holds her hand out to help the older of the pair.

"Doubtful God had much hand in it." Faith grunts out as she grips Kasey's offered and with a little effort, pulls herself up on her weak from misuse knees. "They thought killing me would have put a damper on their plans for subverting slayers to their side, and maybe worried about the reactions of those of us that have already jumped sides."

"You think some of the sisterhood turned traitor?" Kasey asks, her tone holding a mix of betrayal and disgust.

"I hope to Willow's goddess not, but there's hundreds of us and it's not much of a stretch that a few might go darkside. My past is proof enough of that."

Kasey nods grimly as she mulls things over in her head, wondering how they'd be able to uncover any traitors among the slayer sect. of the insurgency among the survivors of Earth and the Colonies.

Faith just wished that Buffy was around to lead the slayers, rather than having that duty fall to her, but the most senior slayer had the good fortune to have been on a vacation of sorts as she'd been visiting several of the slayers that had gone up to the battlestars. More than anything she prayed that the blonde had not been on any of the ships that had been destroyed in the initial stage of the invasion, prior to the fleet jumping away, or the battlestar that had gotten nuked to hell covering the escape of the others.

They'd heard the frantic calls over the wireless from the base now controlled by the enemy, the last words of the captains of over a dozen ships, and close to fifty doomed vipers and raptors in the battlefield as they were overwhelmed.

There had been seven other slayers posted on the Resilience, the 'Earth-born' battlestar that had been destroyed, and while she only knew any of them casually at best, she still felt the pain of their loss in the core of her soul. All this was due to an unforeseen side effect of the mass calling, causing Buffy, Willow Rosenberg and Faith herself to be connected to all the living slayers.

"We should get off the streets before the bastards come up with some kind of loitering law that we're in violation of." Faith says abruptly. "I've had more than enough of the detention center."

Kasey nods and falls into step next to the Slayer General, the pair heading for a cluster of tent-residences in the North-East sector, where most of the surviving council members have settled following the invasion.

As they walk, Kasey can't help but speak up again.

"Least they seem to have left you in better shape then Colonel Tigh." the younger slayer notes grimly. "Saw him and his wife leaving just before you got released, looked like he was missing an eye."

Faith's gaze jerks to the side, catching Kasey's full profile and she opens her mouth to speak only to be cut off at the sound of an explosion. Both slayers whip around to see smoke beginning to pour out the upper windows of one of the buildings about a hundred yards to the west of them, and after a moment twin smiles form on their faces as they realize that it must have been another strike from the Insurgency.

~/~/~/~/~/~

Ten minutes earlier...

"I'm not sure how long I'll be able to hold up the warp, so be sure to get in and out as fast as you can." Ava Carver says with a bit of apprehension in her tone, not sure of how long or how many of the cylons she could manipulate into being in the hangar bay that Galen Tyrol, Sam Anders and her boyfriend James Foley were planning to set off the bomb that the four of them had cooked up.

It was going to be Tyrol and Anders who would actually be the ones to set it off, as James had opted to remain at her side as she used her mind control gifts. During that time she would be vulnerable to any danger posed to her, and with James' enhanced werewolf senses he would be able to tell if anyone got too close.

"Eight minutes should be enough." Tyrol promises and then he and Anders are gone, disappearing inside the building's side entrance.

Ava and James watch them go, the latter looking to his watch after a moment, counting down the minute and a half that was needed for the other two insurgents to get the bomb set up and in position. Ava leans against the wall of the alley and sighs heavily, both of them hidden from view by the trash container along the outer wall.

"Think that we'll ever get off this rock?" She asks, wishing that she could be more hopeful.

"Tyrol and Tigh seem to think so, that Adama wouldn't leave us to die here." James replies with a shrug as he looked up at the re-incarnated alien queen who looked like a punk rocker. "Besides I'm sure your friends that went with are raising all sorts of hell in the fleet to mount a rescue mission."

"You say that like you don't have friends up there too." Ava remarks, rubbing her hands together to battle the cold.

"Not as close as yours. The people that mean the most to me are either here with us or dead." James shrugs, looking up at her for a moment before his gaze falls back to his watch. "Better start now."

Ava nods and closes her eyes, gathering her wits about her before reaching out with the mind-warp, feeling her influence brush against the minds of a few dozen unwary cylons and Antarian foot-soldiers. Once she's roped a decent number into her mental trap, she urges their collective subconscious to make their way into the hangar bay that Galen and Sam had entered minutes before, the hope being to maximize damages against the enemy. Even if the cylons resurrected, it would still mean less of Kivar's followers. Maybe it was a bit over the line to be considered justified, but she knew it was at this point a neccesity. To not fight was to give in, and to give in was almost as bad as joining the enemy.

Those particular thoughts helped her sleep at night, so she kept them around. Least until rescue came, she couldn't afford to let them go.

From beside her, James alternates between keeping the look out and casting brief glances, full of concern, at the black and red haired woman who's eyes were screwed tightly shut as she worked her 'magic'. His concern grows a little as the signs of her struggles to maintain control over the minds of the enemy show themselves on her face, her scrunched forehead beginning to sweat from exertion. He looks down at his watch after a few minutes.

"Okay, just a few more seconds until the eight minute mark." He whispers in her ear, keeping his eyes on the watch as he counts down to zero. "Okay, pull out now Aves."

Ava lets out a gasp as she pulls her powers back in, falling against James as a wave of dizziness brought on by the exertion hits her. James instinctually wraps her in an embrace, and only a second or two passes before the bomb goes off in the hangar.

She's pretty sure she hears Tyrol's excited whoop from somewhere, but her ears are ringing slight from the sudden boom. A couple moments pass and then Tyrol and Anders hurry out and the four of them take off running deep into the city of tents that had been set up following the invasion.

~/~/~/~/~/~

"Fracking insurgents." Kara's eyes flickered to Leoben as he muttered a low string of curses by the window, and she can't help but chuckle in dry amusement. She stifles it as he glares over at her, opting to look away.

"I suppose you get quite a bit of satisfaction from it all." Starbuck hears him say as he walks around the back of her chair to get to the other side of the table, and she turns to look at him with an incredulous look on her face.

"If you expected some other reaction, then you truly are insane." Kara says mockingly. "Not only did you destroy the colonies, you just had to come to Earth and ruin that too."

"It was only a matter of time before humanity did it to themselves. Kobol, the Colonies, Earth... it doesn't matter in the end." Leoben comments with a smirk, purposefully baiting her. "All of this has happened before and it will happen again."

Kara tuned out her ears as Leoben drew close, fingering the pair of chopsticks in her pocket as he leaned over the side of the table until his face was mere inches from hers.

"You will come to love me." he tells her with no small amount of certainty in his voice, his whisper just loud enough that she could hear.

"Fat chance." She snarls, before jamming the chopsticks into the side of his neck.

Leoben's eyes go impossibly wide as Kara rips the improvised weapon from his flesh, and he goes flying as she shoves him away with slayer strength. His body flies through the air and hits the wall before he crumples to the floor in a heap.

Starbuck wastes no time pouncing on Leoben's dying body, stabbing him several more times in the chest until he's choking up blood. She hears him trying to speak, and leans close so she could hear.

"I'll see you soon... Kara." He chokes out, still maintaining a satisfied tone, to which Kara herself smirks at.

"Not as soon as you think Toaster. Thanks for the view." She half-growls in his ear as Leoben's body expires, sending him to the resurrection ship. A moment passes before she grabs the body by the shirt and pants, and with the same slayer strength flings it back across the room to crash through the thick glass that made up the outer wall of the replica of her old apartment back on Caprica.

Kara lets out a shriek of glee at the sight of the hole left behind, and quickly bolts to the back room to grab the bag she'd packed earlier before running out again. She jumps through the hole, falling about twelve feet to land in a crouch, and before any of the enemy can think to stop her, has torn off like a bat out of hell deep into the city of tents.

~/~/~/~/~/~

"This is utter bullshit." Buffy Summers growled from her seat in Lieutenant Colonel Riley Finn's quarters on the Battlestar Glory. "It's been four months and still the Adama's put off rescue efforts. If we wait much longer then there's not gonna be anyone left to save."

"I know that Buffy, believe me." Riley replies placatingly, trying to calm the anger coming from his slayer ex-girlfriend. "The admiral has every intention of returning for the people we left behind on Earth, it's only that more than half the pilots in the fleet haven't seen a true battle with the cylons, and none of them have dealt with the Antarian War Force. If we jump back too soon, then it doesn't matter who's waiting for rescue cause we'll all be dead."

"He's right Buffy." Giles speaks up from the chair next to her, seeing the logic in the words of the former Initiative agent. "Much as I'm loathe to admit it, the best thing for everyone is to follow Adama's lead."

Buffy's gaze snaps to the aging watcher, her eyes ablaze with anger burning holes into his skull, but after a moment the rage subsides and she lets out a tired sigh.

"Every day we waste out here, wherever here is, is another day that Xander, Willow, Faith, and all the rest we left suffer at the hands of these cylon and Antarian bastards. If they're even still alive.." She mutters out, her voice belaying her exhaustion brought on from the events of the past months.

"They know how to survive Buffy, or they wouldn't have made it out of Sunnydale, let along keep up the fight for more than a decade following." Riley's wife, Captain Samantha Finn says from where she leans against the wall behind the Lt. Col.

"I pray that you're right Sam, but I can't stop until I know for sure that they're alive and safe."

Silence falls upon the four, and lasts for a few long moments as no one knows what to say. Finally the silence is broken by the ring of the phone bolted to the wall next to Riley's desk.

"This is Finn." The LC says, grabbing the phone and holding it to his ear. "Yes, I heard about that. Okay sir, I'll be on a raptor over to Galactica in thirty. Finn out."

"Good news?" Buffy inquires, sinking into the leather chair, her tone tinged with bitter sarcasm.

"Yes, actually." Riley replies with a tight smile. "The Admiral and the Agathons apparently have a plan for a rescue op, and Adama is calling a meeting of the military leaders."

He pauses for a moment, giving Buffy a slight smirk. "Adama also wants the leaders of the 'Specials' sect. present."

"Meaning me." Buffy guesses and Riley gives a nod.

"Among others. Adama asked for Giles too, the Roswell group and a few of the ranking slayers, two from each battlestar in addition to Buffy." he intones, and both Buffy and Giles nod.

"Vi and Colleen are the only slayers on the Glory that have been around since Sunnydale, I'd like them there as the representatives." the slayer queen requests, and gives Riley a small but appreciative smile in response.

"Well if there's nothing else, I'll phone Graham and have him round up Vi, Col and your sister, and have them meet us at the transporting raptor."

Buffy gives a tight nod as she gets up to leave. Giles trails after her as she makes her way out of Riley's quarters.

~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~

Insurgency

Disclaimer in first part.

Chapter One, Part Two

~/~/~/~/~

October 3.- 'Last Hope' City – Cylon/Antarian Occupied Earth

Xander Harris stood just outside the entrance to the tent that hid the underground headquarters of the Earth Insurgency, a lit cigarette hanging from his lips as he watches Faith and Kasey approach him, having come around the corner of the street a couple moments before.

Inwardly he's relieved that Faith survived her month long incarceration by the enemy invaders, but can't help the feelings of longing for his best friend Willow Rosenberg, who had been 'detained' just a few days following the arrival and the technologically aided 'disappearing' of most of Earth's population by the alien despot Kivar, or the resentment he harbored toward Faith for being (at least part of) the reason that Willow had become lost to them.

To date he didn't know if his oldest friend was alive or dead, safe or suffering, and it both depressed the shit out of him and led to his recently acquired nicotine addiction.

"X." is Faith simplistic greeting, as the longest lived slayer currently on Earth comes to a stop a few feet from him.

"Faith." the one-eyed former carpenter grunts, giving her a tight nod.

The once dark slayer nods back in return, knowing that her fellow Sunnydale survivor was still plagued by the sliver of hope that the red witch was still alive. She knew that he blamed her still for her inability to successfully guard the escape of Willow and the other magic users following the cloaking spell on the bunker currently housing the few remaining vipers and raptors that Colonel Tigh and Major Thrace had ordered be 'placed beyond Cylon reach'.

Deep down they both knew that Faith wasn't to blame, but at this point Xander had become so far removed from the boy she had met over fourteen years prior on the hellmouth called Sunnydale, and there was Faith's self-doubt and guilt over her own failings over the years that kept her from denying anything that he'd said.

i###Flashback ~ Four Months Earlier###

'We should have anticipated that this day would come' Faith thought as she stood at attention a few feet from the circle of council-allied witches and warlocks that were currently being led in chant by Willow, who stood in the middle of the circle. She looks up at the sky, the macabre sight of the two ruined and still burning battlestars far above in the night sky, held in place by the low gravity of space.

Also in her view of the sky are a number of what she now knew were called basestars, as the members of the Unified Fleet in Cleveland still around after the initial 'disappearances' of all but a fraction of a percent of the near seven billion people that had been around less than a day prior, worked frantically to hide arms and munitions from the invaders.

The first few hours had been quite literally hell, the chaos of the invasion unfolding before their eyes and the anger of the Earthborn military and civilians towards their Colonial counterparts for essentially being the reason that the cylons had come to Earth in the first place.

It had been Willow's idea to cloak the bunker, her quick thinking allowing them the time to actually pull it off. The pilots, including Faith herself, had flown from the Fleet base, and with little time to spare as it fell to occupation of the cylons and Antarians barely an hour later.

Right after fucking Gaius Baltar had spoken for both the colonies and Earth, surrendering almost immediately upon being confronted by the enemy that boarded the Colonial One.

Faith suddenly snaps out of her angry musings, her gaze turning to Willow as the witch cries out as the air in front of her begins to crackle with a growing sphere of black and red energy. The brunette slayer takes a step toward the circle, confused a bit as no one involved had mentioned this being part of the ritual.

Before she can even get remotely close to her friend, the sphere explodes with a booming shockwave that sends Faith and everyone nearby spiraling through the air in different directions depending on where they'd been standing.

Her last memory before she'd wake several hours later was of the ground suddenly coming at her fast, and then the crunch of her skull bouncing off a half buried rock before blackness.

It was dark when she regained consciousness, her well-honed reflexes causing her to shoot up into a sitting position as her eyes fluttered open. For several moments following she had done nothing more than look around at the small fires that littered the ground all around her in confusion.

An off-putting smell had hit her and she then realized that the small fires were the smoldering remains of the dozen or so unlucky souls that had been too close and gotten caught in the explosion.

"W-Willow!?" She had choked out as she struggled to her feet, unsteadily and with a ringing in her ears as she hobbled toward the center of the blast-zone. To her growing horror she realized that the witch wasn't there, but there was also no sign that she was definitively dead. She or her remains were just gone.

As Faith looked at the small, blackened crater in the middle of it all, her thoughts had flown to Xander and worry over how he would take this.

###End Flashback###/i

"I miss her too." Faith whispers as her mind returns to the now, and she sees Xander stiffen slightly as she pushes through the flaps of the tent and out of his line of sight.

He doesn't follow her but Kasey does, though the younger of the slayers goes only as far as the hidden trap door that the two quickly work to uncover.

As soon as their task is complete, Faith takes hold of the rope handle and with a bit more difficulty than she was used to with the aid of her slayer abilities, pulls the door up and open. She hoped that she could adjust to her abrupt quickly, that it wouldn't be all that hard, especially since most of the weapons that she, Xander and the other Sunnydale survivors had utilized a decade prior had been replaced by far more conventional arms and melee weaponry like sniper rifles, high caliber handguns, incendiary grenades and automatic crossbows.

Initially the council members that had integrated themselves into the then Colonial, now Unified Fleet ranks, had trained up on the newest military standards to better prepare themselves against the demons and other forces of darkness. But a bullet to the head of a cylon or Antarian worked just as explosively well as it did bursting apart a vampires melon, or it would if those damned 'toasters' would just stay dead.

Faith gives Kasey a quick look, silently saying 'you know the drill' and the younger slayer nods, pulling the trapdoor shut as Faith descends into the subterranean headquarters of the Earth insurgency.

As Faith makes her way down the amateur-ally crafted staircase into the cavern, Kasey pulls the rug back over the trapdoor and returned the wooden chest to it's previous location. Despite her diminished strength, the senior slayer finds a bit of relief in the fact that her enhanced senses seem to be intact, as she hears the soft thump of the wood against the rug from the bottom of the stairs.

Faith takes her time walking through the short tunnel to the main part of the buzz center of the rebels, figuring there was no sense rushing in when it was an almost certainty that at least one person who would be in attendance of this meeting would have bad news. Someone always did.

As she neared the end of the short tunnel, Faith began to hear voices coming from just beyond the mouth of the cavern proper, and as she steps out into the large 'room' she spots Galen, Anders, Foley, Ava and Cally sitting around an improvised table. She was a bit dismayed, but was hardly surprised to see Cally is wearing a suppression collar like the one that had been forced upon herself and Kasey.

It also doesn't shock her that the Colonies born mechanic is the first of the five to notice her arrival, as all slayers were connected and could sense each other on a level that transcended human perception.

"Welcome back Lieutenant." Cally greets warmly as Faith makes her way over to the group, and the others turn to look at her and she can see the relief in their expressions.

"Good to be back." Faith replies with a small, tight smile, and opts to get right down to business as she takes a seat in between Anders and Ava. "Any word from the colonel yet? Tailspin said she'd seen him and his wife Ellen leaving the detention center just before I got out."

"Not as of yet, no." Anders replies solemnly, turning to look at Faith. "Kara got arrested too, I don't suppose you saw her in there?"

"No, they had me in one of the solitary cells so there wasn't much to see." Faith answers, giving the former Pyramid star an apologetic look. "I wouldn't worry too much about her Sam. She's strong, and from what I've been able to gather there is still a no-kill policy on slayers. Seems Kivar still thinks he can get us to turn our backs on the rest of the human race."

"Yeah, I got an offer too." Cally admits, flicking the metal collar around her throat with her fingertip. "Told them to go frak themselves. After what happened to my son..."

The deckhand turned slayer doesn't elaborate, she doesn't need to. They all felt a sense of loss over the assumed-death of young Nicolas Tyrol, who had been among those who had simply vanished from existence during the first hours of the invasion with the utilization of the Antarian's superior technology.

The silence that Cally's words had brought on is broken after several long moments by Faith, wanting to break up the heavy tension that had befallen them.

"So I saw the fireworks over at the docking station when I was leaving the detention earlier, gonna assume it was one of you guys." She supposes as she spots the pack of cigarettes lying on the table and reaches out to grab one.

"Bit of a team effort, but Galen and Sam got the bomb into the landing bay and detonated it." Ava reports, choosing to downplay her own contributions. Faith gives her a nod and takes a drag off her cigarette, then turns her head at the sounds of someone coming down the tunnel.

It turns out to be Tigh and Xander, both severe looking with their missing eyes, and Faith stands to attention as a show of respect toward the Colonel, the others following suit.

"Enough of that." Tigh half-barks, not wanting to deal with the proper military process for the moment, it made little sense too as their small group would have been labeled terrorists just months prior. Now they were being hailed as heroes by the dwindling remains of the population that had been left behind. "Have we had any success with contacting Galactica's raptor?"

"Not yet." Galen replies, his frustration showing.

"We still haven't been able to get past the jamming devices that the cylons set up." Cally finishes for her husband, her left hand coming up to rub his back in an attempt to help relieve his stress. Some might have had it much worse than others, but they had all been suffering in one form or another for a third of a year now. "The last three people we had inside that tried to get ahold of the frequencies have been caught. Gaeta was the only one spared, and for all we know he could be dead by now."

"Doubtful that they'd kill Gaeta and not parade it around in our faces. They seem to enjoy doing shit like that." Xander muttered darkly as he dropped down on the overturned large wooden spool, his thoughts flying to lost friends.

"Has there been any word from Angel?" Faith inquires, both wondering about the vampire who had disappeared just shy of a month into the occupation, and wanting to steer the conversation toward a more productive heading. She had enough time to mull about all these and plenty more morbid memories in her head during her time in detention.

"Not direct contact, no." James answers, glancing over at the slayer. "He's been sending messages through a secure channel to here, but not much more than to let us know he's still alive. Best estimation is that he's somewhere under Cleveland but he won't say over the shortwave, on the off chance that the enemy has been listening in."

"Has he said if Kara was with him?" Anders asks, his eyes suddenly alert as his hope jumped, but nods sullenly as James shakes his head.

"How long has she been missing?" Tigh inquires, having not heard of Starbuck's abduction and becoming annoyed with himself for not having been in the loop for the past month.

"A little over two weeks now." Anders replies tightly, his gaze seeking out first Faith and then the Colonel. "I don't suppose either of you saw her in there?" he asks, seeming to have forgotten that he'd already questioned Faith about his missing wife, but the formerly dark slayer couldn't hold it against him, the poor man was desperate.

Both Faith and Tigh shook their heads with regret, and Anders gave a stiff nod in reply, rubbing at the back of his neck as he looked away from the others.

"We need to send a message to the Cylons and Antarians, something more than just bombing the occasional heavy raider." Tigh decided aloud, his level of anger risen with the news of Starbuck's disappearance. "A high profile target, one that doesn't resurrect or wouldn't be missed. Baltar, perhaps."

"Getting to him is going to be a bit of a problem." Faith remarked dryly, looking across the table at the colonel for a long moment before moving to Xander briefly and she frowns as the former carpenter looks away, refusing still to forgive her..

"He's going to be overseeing the graduation ceremonies for the new police force." Tyrol says, drawing the attention of the others to him as he pulls a bundle of papers out and drops it onto the table. "Gaeta was able to get it to Seelix and Jammer before he got caught, and as far as we know neither the Cylons or Antarians are any wiser. They got Gaeta trying to get info on the location of the launch keys, so they won't know about any plans for the graduation."

"Unless he talks." Anders mumbled out, still consumed with his worry for Kara and unable to get a proper head on during the group discussions. He only seemed to be the same person that he'd been when they arrived at Earth when he was helping to take action and arms up against their oppressive enemies.

"Gaeta won't talk, man's been different since Bethany, more focused." Tigh notes, thinking of the drastically different man to the boy really, that he'd served with for four years prior to the attack on the colonies. He'd become almost a razor when Bethany, his wife, was counted among the those who'd simply disappeared along with the Tyrol's young son.

Nothing further is mentioned in regards to Gaeta's loyalty, especially after Faith speaks up and changes the topic of discussion to a more pressing and disturbing issue.

"So Gaeta's solid, we all can agree on that." The slayer-lieutenant says, looking from face to face of each of the assembled Insurgency leaders as she gathers her thoughts and the information she'd been able to glean during her 'friendly' visits from the Cylon and Antarian jailors at the detention center. "Thing that has me worried is the slayers that might have bought into Kivar's sales pitch of reward and riches for joining his empire. Fifteen years ago, that could have very well been me, and with even more problem-children in the slayer ranks, I don't hold hope that none will be swayed. So as much as I hate to admit it, we can't trust those who still retain their powers. The ones that haven't been collared."

She nods her head at Cally's collar at the same time she indicates her own. "I'm just glad that the council had the foresight to implement better training rather than just hand-to-hand and close combat weaponry. Don't need to be strong anymore to fight."

"So we're going to hit Baltar then?" Xander surmises, rubbing the back of his head while speaking, calling attention to the fact that no one had shown any real dissidence to the Colonel's suggestion. "So, any ideas how we'll get someone close enough?"

"Yeah." The colonel grunts out. "A couple of them, actually."

The less-experienced military and civilian members of the Insurgency could all say they agreed on one thing that night, the feeling of fear over the thought that the time he'd spent isolated and tortured in the detention center might have finally broken the aging Saul Tigh.

~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~

"Welcome to Galactica, Ms. Summers." Buffy looked over at the deckhand who'd addressed her with an eager tone, and the Slayer 'Queen' gives a nod of acknowledgement back to the young slayer as She steps down from the wing of the Raptor that she'd flown over on with Giles, Vi and Colleen. The other raptor, that had carried Riley, Sam, and Lts. Isabel Evans and Kyle 'Horseman' Valenti, rests about a dozen yards away as it's own passengers disembarked.

"Thank you Kirsten." Buffy replies kindly, giving the younger woman a small smile even though it was clearly strained. It wasn't that she'd not been happy to see the young slayer or anything like that, but after just over four months in space with little to no news regarding the people they'd left behind was draining on everyone, and she hoped that Kirsten wouldn't be offended to her inability to be as enthused. The young slayer, if Buffy's memory was accurate, had had the good fortune to have her family within the fleet, so wasn't feeling the pang of the void Buffy felt by missing most of her own family. She had Dawn and Giles, Gunn, Connor and a number of the slayers that had become like sisters to her, following their joint survival of the Hellmouth. But Angel, Willow and Xander, hell even Spike, Oz and Faith, they were all still stuck on Earth, and that was assuming they were alive at all.

She steps past Kirsten to make her way over to where Riley is standing outside his raptor with the others that's come over with them. She knows Giles will follow, as Vi and Colleen remained with the deckhand slayer, updating her on the happenings of the slayers over on the Battlestar Glory.

As she makes her way over to Riley's group, her gaze flickers over the bustle of activity in the hangar bay, her eyes searching for her sister, even as said sister is running up behind her as witnessed by the three slayers still standing by the raptor that she'd come over to the Unified Fleet's anchorship on.

"Buffy!" the still exuberant-as-ever Dawn more or less screams as she half-tackles the older Summer's sister, the two of them having not seen each other in almost two full weeks, due to their own duties. Buffy had been busy with making sure that the slayers in the fleet were properly prepared for when they would return to Earth to rescue the others, not wanting them to grow lax with keeping in shape with little to do day-to-day up in the fleet. If any vampires or human-looking demons had smuggled aboard any of the ships during the five years between the arrival of the Colonials and that of the Cylons and their Antarian allies and remained for however long, they'd kept a low profile to not draw the Fleet Slayers to them.

Dawn on the other hand, was busy serving as Senior Officer of the Watch on the Pegasus, under the watchful eye of Commander Lee Adama, who the blonde had risked military action against herself when she'd threatened to beat him with a shovel should anything happen to Dawn on his watch. The commander had understood her motives, citing he'd have done the same for his own brother, and they'd begun a tentative friendship as the slayers and council got more and more involved with the Earth Military Sect. of the fleet, and she wonders briefly how long before she'd see him as well.

"Dawnie! Don't sneak up on me like that!" She half-screeches as she turns to embrace her twenty-six year old sister. At thirty-three, Buffy could admit she was beginning to slow down, her slayer powers continuing to aid her in kicking ass, but her rapid healing had decelerated quite a bit, and her body was beginning to feel the wear-and-tear of her refusal to pass the torch off to the younger generation quite yet.

"It's good to see you." She hears Dawn whisper as the younger Summers pressed her face into Buffy's hair, the two sisters clinging to one another as if they'd not seen each other in years rather than just a couple weeks. They'd grown closer in the years that passed after Sunnydale, finally putting the last of their sibling rivalry to bed when they'd suddenly been forced to abandon their friends to the mercies of the Cylons and the Antarian Emperor known as Kivar. "I know it hasn't been that long and all, but still…"

Buffy nods as the two pull apart, knowing what Dawn was going to say before the former key could even say it, let alone trail off midway through. She didn't need to, they all knew it, had said it themselves time and time again over the past months.

"Gotcha Dawnie." Buffy gives her sister a soft smile as she steps away, her eyes twinkling slightly with her mood refreshed by her reunion with her blood sister. "So, any chance that Lee let you in on any of the details of the latest rescue plan that Daddy and C.H. got cooked up now." Daddy and C.H. were Admiral William Adama, and his Earthborn counterpart in the Unified Fleet, General Henry 'Crazy Hank' Fitzpatrick respectively, and as such, the joint heads of the military fleet.

Fitzpatrick was also the commander of the Battlestar Liberty, the last of the four that had fled successfully when the Cylon and Antarian fleets had arrived. Buffy had had the honor of meeting the decorated officer a number of times prior to the invasion, and knew he had family both in the fleet and on Earth. The two unfortunate kin to have been on Earth and left behind, were both in the Unified Military and had been stationed at the central hub of activity for Earth-stationed, the main spaceport base in Cleveland. Shane and Kasey Fitzpatrick both were pilots, and Kasey was one of hers' to boot as a slayer called by Willow's spell.

It was a bit of a shame to her that she didn't know that particular slayer as well, as Kasey had fallen in with Faith's splinter group, more of council freelancers that had become more military since the groups merged to move into a combined future as one unified force. It had surprised Buffy more than a bit, how Faith had fallen so easily into military service as a pilot, but then she had long-since learned just how vastly different the Faith that she'd come to know and more fully appreciate since Sunnydale was in comparison with the fifteen year old that had come to Sunnydale desperate to survive and hide from the sadistic ancient vampire Kakistos, literally more than half a lifetime ago for the formerly dark slayer. While she doubted heavily that she and Faith would ever truly be friends, but she definitely held respect for the last of the Chosen slayers.

"Nothing that you likely wouldn't have already figured by now." Dawn replies tightly, feeling a pang of annoyance toward her commanding officer. She respected the man and liked him well enough, but his continued objections to any form of plan that had been thought up and discarded in the end each time. She knew that each plan had deep flaws well enough once they'd been pointing out, but it was frustrating to watch each plan to save the people they'd left behind, whatever remained of them. Lee was just her outlet to lay blame on, she knew he wasn't really the problem but merely the one practical enough to point the problems out, giving enough of a shit to not care if he was perceived as a pariah for his actions by a number of the crew. Dawn had even heard that the strain between the two Adamas was bigger than ever because of it.

"Any place around here that we could grab a drink?" the blonde Summers asks suddenly, though Dawn knows the reasons, it being no secret that the Slayer Queen hated small craft space travel.

"Yeah, a few of the civvies set up a bar in the portside, a bit of a ways from here, but we should have enough time to grab a few and catch up before Adama's little meeting." Dawn suggests, linking her arm with her sister's and leading her off.

Giles watches the two sisters go, completely forgotten as the pair get wrapped up in their own familial needs, and makes the rest of the walk over to where Riley stands with his wife Sam, Isabel Evans, his Antarian Communications Officer, and Human-Antarian hybrid pilot Kyle Valenti.

"Where's Buffy?" Riley questions with a bit of confusion in his tone, expecting the blonde slayer to stick with the group, at least until after the meeting.

"She and Dawn went to find a drink and catch up a bit." Giles replies as he comes to a stop to stand by the four. He gives Isabel and Kyle a short but friendly nod as the blonde alien drags her fellow Roswellian away, and he catches her telling the pilot of her desire to find Max and Liz quickly. Giles knew the small contingent of Earth born Antarians and the hybrids, having helped in part to get them amnesty from being hunted by a shadow faction of the United States government known as the 'Special Unit'. Alien hunters with no ability to discern between friend and foe, and likely would have sparked a war earlier than had come if they'd managed to kill the seven they hunted. Isabel and Kyle were of those seven, along with Isabel's brother Max Evans, Max's wife Liz, their friend Cpl. Maria Deluca and the two that had been left on Earth, Michael Guerin and Ava Carver. With the exception of Maria, who was a spell-called slayer, the other six were in possession of some truly impressive alien powers, and the two married served as doctors aboard the Pegasus to utilize their healing abilities. Likely the healers had come aboard with the Raptors that Dawn had come on.

"I, on the other hand, will be heading to the infirmary to see about a spot of tea with the good doctor Cottle. I will see you at the meeting. Lt. Colonel, Major." Giles spoke, calling the pair by proper rank in public, as expected of the man who'd been elected to the office of Presidency for the Earth half of the Fleet several months previous, just following the fleet's escape from Earth.

Both Riley and Sam saluted for appearance's sake, knowing that they needed to keep the façade up for the public as well as anyone, in more private setting they were as much a part of Giles' family as Buffy, Dawn or any of the rest of the Sunnydale alumni were. They watched him head off in the opposite direction that he'd come, passing by them with a swiftness surprising for one of his age.

"So, a drink sounds pretty good about now to be honest, sir." Vi noted as she and Colleen came up to where Riley and Sam stood as well, the redhead slayer-pilot giving her commanding officer a brief salute of her own and a smirk. Drinking was banned for on-duty officers during normal hours of operation and had been completely dis-allowed on the Glory and the Liberty following the flight from their enemies. Galactica and Pegasus were a bit more lax, being more used to this kind of lifestyle, so both the slayers present were eager to take advantage of being off their ship of duty for a bit and imbibe a bit.

"Yeah, why the hell not?" Riley half-grumbled out, giving the two slayers a faux glare. "If you miss the meeting cause you both got too drunk, you can explain it to Buffy this time, I ain't gonna cover this time."

"No worries Commander, just one or two to take the edge off is all." Colleen promises, Vi nodding at her side before he jerks his head to tell the pair to get lost, and they oblige him, grabbing one of the deckhands as they go, and Riley figures the girl must be another slayer that was stationed under William Adama's command.

"Sir?" Riley turns to face the uniformed man standing before him and Sam now, a ranking Marine by the look of him. "Sergeant Benjamin Stone, sir. I've been asked to bring you to meet with the Admiral at his quarters."

"Lead on then, Sgt. Stone." Riley barks officiously, once again mostly for appearance's sake, and both he and his wife fall into step behind the marine as he leads them toward Adama's 'apartment'.

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Chapter I, Part III

'Last Hope' City - Earth

Jean Barolay was having a shit day, what with the septic system backing up at the water treatment plant at work and finding signs of forced entry at the home of her best friend Samuel Anders as she came up to the front entrance of the shanty in the city of mostly tents, hadn't served well to improve her mood. She drew out her pistol and used the end of the barrel to push open the already-ajar door, letting her gun lead in case whoever it was that had kicked the door in was still lurking and, slash or, trigger-happy.

She finds her entry into the small residence, glorified apartment really, uneventful and lowers her gun slightly as she creeps a bit further inside, keeping her ears open for any sounds that would indicate the location of the intruder if they moved suddenly.

She finds said intruder in the bathroom area, covering her right arm with gauze and a wrap-around bandage, her back turned from where Barolay stands in the doorway. Jean doesn't need to see the face of the intruder to know their identity, the sleeveless shirt the woman is clad in allowing her to show off her arm tattoo, and the Ex-Pyramid hopeful recognizes it immediately.

"Captain Thrace?!" She chokes out, a heavy weight lifted from her mood at the sight of her fellow slayer, them being two of only six Colonial-born military women to have suddenly been called as a residual effect of Willow Rosenberg's sorcery a number of years prior to their arrival at Earth. They had arrived at the co-ordinates brought back to Galactica by Racetrack, Skulls and a small group of Earth Military, and when the fleet jumped to Earth, She and Kara, along with Cally Tyrol, Louanne Katraine, Brandy Harder and Diana Seelix had all switched on. As vampire slayers, not cylons of course, to which Barolay had been immensely relieved to discover upon meeting with one of the Earth Military entourage, the then-Captain Graham Miller. The now-Major Miller had close ties with the Slayer council back on Earth, and had been informed of the possibility of the existence of slayers in the fleet by his superiors.

It was a bit terrifying for the six prior to the revelation of what slayers were, having been grouped together and isolated following unnatural feats of accidental strength almost immediately upon arrival at Earth. Katraine and Cally had both been convinced they were all going to be airlocked, but then the discovery of the cylon Cavil had thrown a wrench into the belief that the six women were Cylon, as there were now seven known, and no room for six more, only five. It was shortly following the air-locking of the Cavil twins that Barolay and the others were introduced to Miller, and were among the privileged group of individuals to set foot on Earth as part of the first wave of settlers several weeks following. Apparently slayers had come to be revered heroes amongst the Earth population, some even seen as celebrities of a sort. Only Katraine and Harder had loved the attention of any of the six, and by the time that the Cylons had shown up, the pair had grown so tired of the public affection that'd they'd had retreated back up to the fleet to avoid the adoring fans of the six slayers that had come from the stars. Barolay, Kara, Cally and Seelix had maintained lower profiles and had remained on Earth, living off the new space port base of the Unified Fleet, at least right up until the invasion.

Captain Kara Thrace, for her part, didn't look too shocked to see her as she turned in the chair and looked over at where Jean still stood in the doorway. Instead she lets a grin slide over her visage as the two Colonial-born slayers and pilots stare at one another for a long moment of near silence, the only noise filtering in from the street, of passerby's and rumbling vehicles.

"Hey J.B., good to see ya again." Is Kara's cocky reply, her tone smooth and easy, as if she'd hadn't been missing for weeks without as much of a word of Thrace's survival.

"Where the hell have you been?" Barolay demands, trying not to sound too accusing, but with the hell that her best friend Sam had been in since her disappearance, worried frakless over her safety daily and so consumed with finding out her fate, one way or another.

"That frakking toaster Leoben decided he wanted to play house, until he could get me to accept my destiny to 'be with him'. Guess he never got the wave memo that I have my own destiny now." Kara replies with shrug and then Jean sees her wince as the blonde pulls the bandage tight around her arm, stepping further into the room for a better vantage point. Kara's eyes follow her gaze and she gives the redhead a shrug and awkward grin, "Sliced my arm on a piece of the window still in the frame jumping out it after I put that damned cylon stalker through it."

"Won't they be looking for you?" Barolay asks, throwing a wary glance at the still open door leading into the small residence.

"Not for a while yet, if that blast I saw right before my escape took out as many cylon bastards as I hope it did, it'll take him a bit to download and get back down here to come for me." Kara replies, her voice tight as she ties the bandage securely around her arm, and then glances at the clock fastened to the 'wall'. "Also means that I've only bought myself a few hours to make myself gone, least enough so that that idiot toaster will know I'm out of reach."

"You're running?!" Jean can't help but exclaim with a bit of her earlier attempt to refrain from being accusing falling away as she speaks to the wife of her best friend.

"No, I'm sure as hell not running." Kara bit back, her own tone forceful and indicative of not appreciating that Barolay might think so little of her, even after all the time they'd been friends since the Caprica rescue mission. "Gaeta got himself caught passing me information on the attack Tyrol, Anders, Foley and Carver were planning, which I used as the signal to make my escape. He told me to get something to Angel and his group, that would be helpful and given that Felix's actions might very well get him executed, I kinda owe it to him not to let his sacrifice be worthless."

"Well, at least tell me you plan to see Sam before you head into Cleveland, poor bastard's been making himself sick with worry over you." Barolay more or less demands, as she rubs her fingertips against the base of her hairline, feeling a slight itch.

"Can't make any promises, the less people that know where I've been and gone is the better for all of us." Starbuck replies, standing up from the chair and grabbing her overshirt off the table to quickly pull it on. She tucks her dogtags underneath before speaking again. "The information I have needs to get to Angel, sooner than later. It could be the solution to finally getting rescue from the fleet if we can pull it off."

"You make it sound risky as frak." Barolay mutters and Kara throws her a look, silently asking if the pilot known as Furie thought that Kara would ever have it any other way. "Just.. don't get yourself killed. We've lost more than enough people lately, and last thing I want is Sam having to see your picture up on one of the memorials. It would break him."

Kara nodded stiffly, having given herself little time to think about her husband since Gaeta had visited two days prior and had her hide the information packet he needed to get to Angel. Her whole mind gearing toward escape and fulfillment of this mission that could turn the tide of the war back over to the favor of the Colonials, Earth-born, and the rebel Antarians being held as glorified prisoners of war by the cylons, on another planet they'd managed to ruin for everyone involved.

"I will try, honestly Jean. But if I can't get this done, there is a good chance that Adama and the others will never be able to get back without being destroyed on sight." Starbuck intones, trying to keep from sounding overly hopeful, but it was the first real break that they'd gotten since the whole thing started.

"What is it?" Jean presses, wanting some answers for her best friend's mental anguish, but knowing she's not likely to be given specific details, at least until the operation in question was completed, whether in success or failure. She could only pray that it would be the former of the two, rather than lose Anders in the aftermath of it going all FUBAR.

"I can't say, not here or right now. Not accusing you of anything, but there are traitors among us, and one might be listening." Kara replied, lowering her voice considerably as she looks at Barolay. "Leoben, idiot that he is, let a few things slip while he had me as his houseguest about having collaborators within the Insurgency, and with what you and Sam went through back on Caprica, the two of you are on the very short list of people I still trust not to be a rat. So don't take offense to-"

"KARA?!" Both slayers jerk around to find Sam standing in the short, narrow hall behind where Jean had entered only moments before, and the expression on Starbuck's face goes from cocky to almost sheepish as she takes in her husband's gobsmacked look.

"Hey Sam." She says simply as the three stare at one another, all suddenly struck with a loss of words.

~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~

"Okay, so is anyone else uncomfortable with the Colonel's plan?" Cally questioned as she walked next to her husband, and her gaze moves among the faces of the people walking with them; Faith, James and Ava. She looks a bit disturbed as she takes in the lack of any care in the expressions on their faces.

"No." James replies almost immediately, surprising himself even. "These bastards have taken almost everything from us, and twice as much from you, Galen and the rest of the Colonials. Anyone that willingly joins up with them, they deserve what they get. Maybe it's harsh, but this is a war."

"Maybe this isn't a good talk to be having in public." Faith mutters out, just loud enough for the other four walking with her can hear. "Not that I'm disagreeing with the Colonel, mind yah, but I really ain't looking to get sent back to the detention center when I only just got out."

James gives the formerly dark slayer a brief but piercing look, but nods after a nudge to the shoulder from his half Human-half Antarian girlfriend of two years, calming his anger a bit. He wasn't sure why, but Ava was the only one that he'd met who's mere presence served to calm the wolf buried deep within him. He'd been a werewolf once upon a time, and though had been one of those lucky enough to receive the cure, if you could really call it a cure. It had been just over a year since he'd taken the serum, and although he no longer transformed on full moons, the reflexes and heightened senses remained, to which he was immensely thankful as the side-effect abilities had helped to make him one of the best Earth-born Viper Pilots in the Unified Fleet, at least before the Cylons and Kivar came to Earth. The only fear he had was that the cure would eventually wear off as the wolf inside him raged against the cage it had been put in every moment, and with the enemy having hoarded or destroyed the remainder of the medicine.

"I sure as shit don't disagree either, but Faith is right. We need to keep our heads on and be wary of traitors among us." Ava concurs softly, rubbing her hand slowly up and down James' back comfortingly. "There's no doubt that if any of us are thought to be a real threat, they can and will kill us. Poor Illyria was proof of that, and she was one of our best fighters. Hell, Kivar has been looking for any reason to kill me and Michael, if he's not killed Mike already."

Mike was Michael Guerin, another human-Antarian Halfling like Ava that had grown up on, and was loyal to Earth and the survival of the human race. He was also another of the founding members of the Insurgency, and had been arrested early on for taking a more 'explosive' offensive against the invaders. He had been tossed in detention following an attempt to assassinate Kivar as he took first step on the planet, along with several others from both Earth and the Colonies, including a grieving father named Charlie Connor whose son had disappeared just like the Tyrol's son Nicolas on day one of the invasion. Michael and Charlie were the only two of the attempted assassins to have been spared that day. Both had been sent to the newly constructed detention center, and had not been seen or heard from since, at least not by anyone among the insurgents or their close-knit group of leaders.

"I won't let that happen Aves." James promises, turning to look down at the small woman who he was fairly certain his inner wolf had claimed as his mate prior to receiving the cure. That sort of thing couldn't just be washed away, no matter how advanced modern medicine got, it was almost too primal and James figured to rip that away would kill his wolf completely, and by extension James himself.

"Don't make promises you can't ensure keeping lover." Ava replies, looking up at him as well with a small smile. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

The pair doesn't press their affection for one another much further than that, both knowing that it was better saved for their own privacy, and turn their gazes to Faith as she speaks again.

"So, uh.. Anyone feel goodly enough to throw some eats down my throat?" The Boston-born slayer inquires, her tone holding a bit of discomfort for having to ask. "Likely all my food spoiled or was stolen during my 'vacation', and I'm really not wanting to fire up some canned beans after a month of the garbage they were feeding us in there on the days we'd actually gotten food."

"Not a problem sir, you're welcome to join us." Cally speaks up for herself and her husband, knowing that Galen wouldn't have a problem with it, as he'd been more then obliging to ensure her happiness following the loss of their son. She didn't take advantage of it much, just minor things that lightened their lives for short periods of time and distracted her from thoughts about Nicolas. Since the arrival of the Colonials on Earth, and meeting Faith, she and the ex-dark slayer had grown close, and after Faith spending more than a month in captivity, felt the lieutenant deserved a decent meal rather than whatever scraps were left to her.

Faith gives Cally an appreciative look, while still hating herself a bit for needing to beg, and then looks to Galen who gives a shrug and a nod.

"More the merrier." Galactica's former deck chief replies with a shrug, not really caring who Cally invited to dinner, provided that they weren't cylon or Antarian, excluding Ava and the missing Michael, of course, and both were half-human anyways. "You two coming along too?"

"Nah, it's getting late and we're gonna head home." Ava replies quickly, not wanting to impose, and throws a look at James when she sees the hungry look on the Irishman's face. "Oh, relax lover, I'm sure we can find more than enough for you to eat."

She says the last part with a seductive tone, and James' eyes widen slightly at Ava's words, before he grabs her by hand to lead her away,

"Yeah… we'll catch up with you guys later." James says in a hurry, now having extra incentive to get Ava back to their home and quick.

Faith, Galen, and Cally watch with a bit of amusement as the two make their way off from the group, waving over their heads as they headed for home and whatever events were to unfold once they got there.

None of the group of insurgents and close friends, neither the pair walking off or the three standing there watching the other two go, knew in that moment that it would be the last time that they would all be together for quite some time, as elsewhere insidious plans were being devised by the enemy.

Insurgency

Disclaimer in first part.

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Chapter I, Part IV

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Commander's Quarters – Galactica

Riley and Samantha Finn came to a brief stop as they arrived at Adama's personal apartment on the Galactica, watching in silence for a moment as Sgt. Stone spoke with the guard stationed outside the door and then said guard looked over at the Glory commander and his wife before nodding and giving the door a couple sharp knocks. A moment or two passes and then both the Finn's can hear the deadbolt being disengaged from within, and the door pulls open to reveal Lee Adama standing on the opposite side.

"You're late." He says grouchily upon seeing Riley and Sam, an annoyed look on his features.

"Yeah, I could have gotten here sooner, but you'd still be an asshole." Riley growls back, causing both the eyes of Sgt. Stone and the posted guard to widen out of shock. There is a long moment of tension and then both Riley and Lee break into grins.

"Get the frak in here already Finn." Lee says after a pause as both of the battlestar commanders chuckle at their own little inside joke, and Lee pulls the hatchway door open further to allow entry to both the Finn's. The married couple steps through and Lee looks to Bodie for a moment. "Dismissed Sergeant."

"Sir." Bodie salutes briefly, and then turns and departs after Lee returns the gesture, making his way down the corridor outside the commander's quarters with intent to head to one of the mess halls.

"So, I'm guessing we're the last to arrive then?" Samantha Finn inquires as Lee pulls the door closed and gives her a nod.

"Fitzpatrick got here about ten minutes ago, he and the Admiral are waiting in the study, just waiting on Helo and Athena, the visionaries behind the latest rescue attempt idea." The Pegasus commander replies with a curt nod, before leading the way around the entry 'hall' and into the first adjoining room, which served as an office of sorts for the elder Adama. Upon entry, both Riley and Sam are met with the sight of Adama sitting behind his desk and looking over at them. General Henry 'Crazy Hank' Fitzpatrick is also present, sitting in one of the leather chairs and half turned to look at them from his seat.

"Lt. Colonel, Captain." Fitzpatrick greets with a heavy Boston Irish accent, the oldest man in the room looking intense with his long gray beard and sharp gaze. "Good of you both ta join us."

"Sorry, sir. One of the transporting raptors had a malfunction midway through launch and held us up for the twenty minutes it took to repair it, won't happen again General." Riley apologizes and explains himself, giving the ranking officer of the Earth side of the Unified Fleet his due respect with the use of his proper title.

The General nods and looks away, facing back toward Adama, who Riley then locks eyes with and then takes his wife's hand to lead her over to the couch against the opposite wall at the Admiral's brief nod. Lee takes up residence in the seat next to Fitzpatrick, and the small group of military leaders fall into an uneasy silence for a few moments until they hear the hatchway door open again with a short grind and then Capt. Karl 'Helo' Agathon and his cylon wife Sharon 'Athena' Agathon enter the room, and the six present begin to discuss Helo and Athena's idea in privacy.

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Joe's bar – Galactica

"I'm getting so damn tired of sitting around up here doing nothing." Lt. Vi Mackenzie grouses, looking around at the other six slayers that had gathered one of the tables inside the bar. The redhead winces slightly as she takes a pull of the glass of beer that would likely serve better as motor fuel in front of her and lets it slide down her throat, before she speaks again. "It's been months and still the command has made no real attempt to mount any kind of rescue. Another week and I swear I'm gonna just take my raptor and go myself."

"I'll drink to that Crimson." Caridad Ramirez, one of the few Sunnydale potentials besides Vi and Colleen in the fleet, the only other one being Shannon Crawford, who was stuck over on the Pegasus and unable to get away from her duties as a marine. Caridad was a pilot as well as Vi, her callsign being Nikita, and as slayers the pair had become two of the best in the fleet, out of the hundreds of fly-men and women in the service of the Unified Fleet. "Hell, I might even go with you, been bored shitless without any action. I'd be happy just to go a couple rounds with that Rock-Beast from Los Angeles that Faith told us about at this point, just to do something."

"I think we can all agree with that sentiment." Annabelle Frost, callsigned Icicle muttered out, only loud enough to be heard by the other six at the table. Anna was one of the slayer-pilots that was stationed on the Pegasus, and had the honor of flying Lee Adama, Dawn Summers, Noel 'Narcho' Allison, and the Dr. and Dr. Evans over to Galactica for the meeting to discuss new rescue plan that had been devised in the two weeks that had followed the last meeting that had bared any real options that had been considered anything less than a black cat run. Annabelle was a New York city native, who'd been found by Robin Wood during the 'great slayer hunt' in late 2003, and had later been one of the numerous slayers that followed Faith Lehane into military service, having already been through basic training and awaiting deployment overseas. Her status as a slayer however, had prolonged her seeing any military-type action for several years and she'd been shocked to discover this when the head of the training camp had called her into his office so that the watcher Wood could explain about her new destiny. She'd soon afterwards fallen head-first into her new calling and lot in life with eager participation. Instead of fighting Taliban forces in Afghanistan, she'd found herself battling demons and vampires with a Lieutnant's pay grade.

"Adama is trying guys." Louanne 'Kat' Katraine interjects after taking a pull of her own beer, the only slayer at the table that had been born on the now dead Colonies, and the one amongst them that had the most experience fighting the cylons. She was also the only one among them that was truly loyal to Adama, not that the others didn't follow orders but they were council operatives first and foremost, and followed that chain of command primarily. "We just need to have patience, and trust that he and the other commanders can come up with a feasible solution to this whole mess with Earth."

"Bah, that's easy to say when he was more or less responsible for the cylons coming to Earth in the first place." Vanessa Curtis says with a bit of a slur in her tone, having been at the bar for some time already when the rest had shown up, and as such was a bit drunker. Vi, Caridad and the others whose origins were on Earth look at her a bit uncomfortably, and remain silent, but Kat takes offense as the only Colonial in the group.

"Take that back!" Galactica's current CAG snarls, glaring angrily at the Liberty-based viper pilot callsigned Valkyrie, who merely fixes the angry Kat with a bored look filled with indifference.

"Why the hell should I?" Vanessa demands, the booze fuelling her inner rage and discontent of having her best friend stuck on Earth with no plans to save her or anyone else in over four months. "Ev-veryone knows it, just to polite to say it. I don't give a shit about niceties anymore."

Vanessa turns away from Kat to look at Vi and Caridad, silent for a moment before she speaks again. "Anything you guys wanna do as far as going back to Earth, count me in. To hell with Fitzpatrick and Adama and their willingness to sit around doing jackshit while everyone we left behind suffers an-"

Whatever Valkyrie is about to say is cut short as Kat launches herself over the table with a furious look to punch Vanessa in the face, nearly turning the table over with her lunge off the surface. The force of Kat's blow knocks Vanessa from her chair and her own momentum causes both to go sprawling on the floor as they both start throwing punches and kicks at one another as they each get lost in their fight, and while Vi, Caridad, Colleen, Annabelle and Kirsten all quickly jump up to break the two apart, it's Buffy who gets there first to pull the two apart with ease.

"That's enough!" Buffy orders with anger filling her own tone as she pulls both of the younger slayers to their feet, and shoves them apart, pushing Kat back toward the group of slayers standing by the table and Vanessa in the direction of the exit. "Go sleep it off!" She orders of Vanessa, having witnessed the entire incident from the booth she was sharing with Dawn, and knowing that Kat wasn't going to be an issue once Valkyrie left.

Vanessa gives Buffy an angry glare for a long moment, before she deflates and gives an almost mocking salute. "Yeah sure, boss. Anything you say."

Buffy and the others watch as Vanessa turns and walks out of the bar, her movements a bit shaky due to her consumption of booze. Once she'd left, the blonde turns to look at Kat for a moment thoughtfully, before giving each of the other slayers a quick look over.

"I think you all should call it a night as far as the drinking goes." She suggests, her tone baring no room for argument from any of the younger slayers, and she turns back to Kat for a moment. "And despite whatever anyone says to piss you off, your anger would be better spent on fighting the real enemies, not eachother."

"Okay first of all, I don't answer to you." Kat snarls as she pulls free of Vi and Annabelle, who'd caught her when Buffy had pushed her and Vanessa apart. "It's been months since any of us have had any action, or even seen the cylon bastards. What the hell did you expect?!"

Before anyone can say anything else, Kat storms off and heads for the exit on the other side of the bar, opposite from the one that Vanessa left through. Buffy and the others watch her go for a moment, and then realize that the entire bar has gone silent. A couple short moments pass and then both Annabelle and Kirsten leave as well, following after Kat in the hopes of catching up with her to calm the angry Colonial woman down.

"Guess there is a reason why drinking is banned on Glory and Liberty after all." Colleen comments with a subdued tone, and quickly finishes off the last of her own beer before Buffy or anyone else can object.

Buffy throws her a less than amused glance and sighs before turning and returning to the table she was sharing with Dawn, as the four remaining slayers sit back down at the table to finish their drinks, little conversation happening from there, all of them seeming to get lost in thought.

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Xander had a stern look on his face as he passed by two of the cylon model four standing a bit away from the entrance to his home, the pair overseeing the loading up of a truck parked outside one of the numerous storage facilities that had become off-limits to humans since the arrival of the enemy. With them are a small group of Antarian soldiers, looking menacingly at passerbys as they hide behind their weapons.

'Fuckin' pussies.' Xander thinks to himself as he gets past the group and continues the remainder of the distance to his own residence, a shanty compared to even the house that was once owned by his deadbeat, alcoholic parents. He couldn't really complain though, knowing his current living arrangements would likely look more than appealing if it was what he had come back to following a month in the detention center as Faith and Saul Tigh had recently endured.

He knew he was wrong to be harsh to Faith, as the girl he'd met so long ago had put tremendous effort into redeeming herself, and when he'd really had a chance to think things over following Sunnydale, he'd realized just how badly he, Buffy, Willow, all of them had treated her. Not to mention the hypocrisy of how quickly Willow had been welcomed back into the fold after her little rampage fueled by grief over Tara's murder, especially when the witch had left behind a much higher death toll, with seven bodies left in her wake. Faith had only left two, and one had been an unfortunate accident. And neither compared to the collective blood still on the hands of Angel, Spike and his late ex-fiancée Anya Jenkins.

Drawn out of his thoughts as he reaches his front door and finds it ajar, he gives a wary look back at the cylons and Antarians still by the truck and draws his pistol so it's out of their view before entering the residence.

"Hello?" He calls into the small home, pushing the ajar door open fully and stepping inside with his gun out and ready to fire should anything jump out at him from around a corner suddenly. He isn't surprised to get nothing in response, and breathes out with a bit of relief as he realizes that the front 'living room' is empty, leaving only his small kitchen and bedroom that were at the back.

Hugging the wall, he makes his way to the door-less entryway into the kitchen, hiding just out of sight for a moment, before whipping himself onto the threshold, gun jerking back and forth a couple times as his eyes dart all over the small room, and finding no sign of life.

He backs out of the entryway and looks sideways down the wall to the closed bedroom 'door', which was really just a large piece of plywood that he'd scavenged from one of the Cylon dumpsites of unused building materials. He gives said piece of wood a wary look before slowly creeping over and pushing it open with the barrel of his gun as he remains in the relative safety of the living room.

When nothing is heard from within following his action of opening the door, he peeks his head around the corner and nearly drops his gun, gasping in surprise at the sight that greets him, an all-too-familiar figure with red hair laying upon the futon against the far wall with their back to him, seeming to be asleep.

"Willow?!" he exclaims, quickly rushing over to where she's laying, and looks down at her with a puzzled look as she doesn't answer, her eyes remaining closed in apparent sleep.

"Willow?" He repeats in confusion, wondering why his outburst hadn't awoken her and he reaches out to shake her awake. As soon as he grips her shoulder, her body rolls over and exposes her face fully, and Xander throws himself backward with a primal scream of grief as he takes in the half-burnt off visage of his up-to-now missing lifelong best friend. "NOOOOOO!"

~End of Chapter One~

To Be Continued…

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Notes: (1) The only empowered Antarians in this fic series are the Roswell/New York groups (and anyone that they changed through healing), Kivar, Nicolas and original characters Akuma and General Corvis. They do, however have superior technology to both the Cylons and Unified Fleet.

(2) Illyria's fate will be revealed in forthcoming prequel ficlet, 'The Fall of a God-King".

(3) Akuma and Corvis are Kivar's brother and cousin, respectively, and will appear a bit later in the story(ies).

(4) How Ava and the Roswell group got to be involved with the Watcher's Council and later how both became involved with the Military, will be explained in another forthcoming prequel ficlets entitled 'Amnesty' and 'Enlistment'.


	2. Chapter 2, parts 1 and 2

Insurgency

Disclaimer in first part.

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Chapter II, Part I

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[i]'First day of kindergarten. You cried because you broke the yellow crayon, and you were too afraid to tell anyone. You've come pretty far, ending the world, not a terrific notion. But the thing is? Yeah. I love you. I loved crayon-breaky Willow and I love ... scary veiny Willow. So if I'm going out, it's here. If you wanna kill the world? Well, then start with me. I've earned that.'[/i]

A single tear rolled down the side of Xander's face as he watched Willow's sheet-covered body being carried out of his residence by a couple of the local morgue guys from the human 'hospital'. His thoughts and memories dredging up the events that had occurred at the temple that Willow had raised from the ground by the bluffs in Sunnydale more than eleven years earlier, in the witch's grief over losing Tara.

He shakily pulls out his pack of cigarette as Willow is loaded into the back of a covered pick-up truck spray painted with the word 'MEDICAL' on it's side and only just manages to get it lit with his shaky hands as the sound of the back doors shutting is heard. He takes a deep drag off the cigarette and looks up at the truck as it begins to pull away to head for the hospital morgue.

Xander watches the truck drive away from him for a couple moments and then it disappears around a turn in the dirt street. He takes two further drags from the cancer stick and then throws it to the dirt and crushes it beneath his boot.

He's about to go back inside with the intention of grabbing his futon and bringing it to the front of the Cylon/Antarian's main base of operations and setting it ablaze at the entrance as a show of righteous fury and shoot anyone that came out to investigate until his ammunition ran out. He just prayed that he didn't run into Faith during his planned suicide run, cause with his currently enraged mindset and the way things currently stood between them, he wasn't sure he'd not shoot her too.

Before he can enter his home however, he is distracted by a distraught Kennedy Limon calling out his name, and turns to see the original Sunnydale potential running toward him. He can see the crumbling of her spirits as he faces her and she gets close enough to see his begrieved features.

"It.. It's true then?" Kennedy asks softly as she comes to a stop only a couple feet from where he stood, her question hesitant as she is clearly hoping that Xander will correct the news she'd just heard from one of the bystanders who had seen the body as it was being brought out.

"Yeah." Xander nods stiffly, fighting back tears in his remaining eye, and looking down at the ground for a long moment. Willow had been his best friend forever, but Kennedy had been her life-partner, and he couldn't imagine how much deeper the slayer's grief went. "She's gone Ken, I'm so sorry."

Saying it makes it all the more real, and the wall holding back Xander's emotions cracks, and he sinks to his knees, suddenly not caring about not showing public weakness as the tears flow unabashedly from his eye. He feels Kennedy fall to her own knees next to him, hearing her own sobs as she wraps him in a tight embrace. He returns the hug, and both of them spend a few long moments on the ground, wallowing in their shared pain.

"We're going to make these fuckers pay." Kennedy says after a couple minutes, her voice steely and resolved, as she reaches up to wipe the sleeve of her gray shirt against her eyes to clear the tears. "Every single last one of them, that had anything to do with this."

"Oh, no doubt." Xander replies, his own rage evident to anyone watching. "They're gonna wish they never heard of Earth." He adds with a snarl, to which Kennedy nods emphatically.

"We should get off the street, before anything." She notes as she pulls away from Xander to pull herself to her feet. Once standing upright, the collared slayer holds her hand out to the one-eyed former carpenter, who takes it and pulls himself up as well.

The two remain outside for a brief moment longer, before Xander turns and leads the way into his home, the door slamming behind them once both are inside.

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The residence of Sam Anders was still filled with tension almost an hour following Sam's return home to find Kara and Barolay. The last had departed some time ago, and the two married Viper pilots were currently sitting opposite one another at the kitchen table, an uneasy silence hanging over them following Kara's near-hour long explanation of where she'd been the past weeks, and also what she'd be tasked to do.

"So.. you just get back and you're leaving again already?" Sam asks finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

Kara can tell that he's less than pleased with her intentions, but knows that what she plans to do needs doing. There was too much riding on it to blow it off, and it could be the very thing they needed to get everyone off this rock and back to the fleet.

"I need to go." Kara replies with a bit of apology in her tone. "Even if I didn't have information that needed to get to the right people, Leoben will be back sooner or later, and this is the first place that he'll come looking for me. Frakkin toaster is obsessed with me, and even after all these years I don't know why."

"Maybe the slayer thing?" Sam grumbles out, fixing his gaze on the table and pointedly not meeting the gaze of his wife.

"No, he was obsessed before that, and no one in the Colonies even knew what slayers were before Racetrack and Skulls found Earth five years ago."

"Doesn't mean the cylons didn't."

"How would they? Slayers are Earth-born and if not for finding it, neither me or Barolay or the other four we know of from the Colonies would have even been called." Kara says with a shrug. "Doesn't change anything if we knew the reason why either way. Leoben is obsessed, and he isn't going to stop unless I give in, which is never going to happen."

"So let me come with you then." Sam responds, his eyes flickering upward to finally look at her, and Starbuck can see the desperation in his eyes, not wanting to be separated from him either. If only life was so kind.

"The Insurgency needs you here." She says after a long moment of consideration, wanting to say yes that he could come, but knowing it would be selfish of her. "Your experience from the Caprica Resistance makes you invaluable."

"Fuck the Insurgency." Sam snaps angrily, but deep down he knows she's right. "Fuck the cylons and Antarians and everything. Let's just go, there's plenty of places we could hide on Earth that those bastards would never find us."

Kara frowns at his words and her gaze turns icy. "You better count your gods-damn lucky stars that Barolay didn't stay to hear that bullshit. In a perfect world sure, I'd be more than happy to run off to parts unknown with you, but people died to get this information. Good people Sam, and they aren't coming back like the toasters do, they're just gone. I refuse to let their sacrifice be in vain."

Years ago, she would likely have jumped at the chance to get away from it all, the selfish alcoholic she'd been becoming and all, but since the arrival at Earth and becoming a slayer she had finally matured enough not to shirk her duties just because there was an easier alternative. Being a part of the slayer sisterhood, she finally felt like she had a true family rather than just a mentally abusive and drug addicted mother and a father she could barely remember. Last thing she wanted to do was let them down, even if it meant pissing off her husband.

Sam is silent for a long moment before finally nodding in resignation.

"You're right, I'm sorry." He acknowledges with a bit of sheepishness in his voice as he meets Kara's gaze once more. "So when are you going to go then?"

Kara is silent for a few seconds as she considers how long it would take Leoben to resurrect and come after her, once he got back to the detention center 'apartment' and found her gone.

"Some time tonight I think would be best." She replies, feeling bad about having to leave him behind, but knowing that it was best for everyone. If she did allow Sam to come with her, and neither could be found, it was likely that Leoben would take out his frustrations on Sam's friends, including Barolay, and she wasn't about to let anyone die for her. "I can get out of tent city easily with the help of night, make it into Cleveland by sunrise."

"Are you taking anyone with you, at least so they can watch your back?" Sam presses, not wanting her to go alone, knowing the value of safety in numbers. "You shouldn't have to do.. whatever you need to do so badly alone."

"I wasn't even planning on letting anyone know I was back, but you and Barolay put a stop to that." She replies, choosing to be honest with the ex-Pyramid star. "So no, hadn't been intending to, and besides I'll be with Angel and his group."

Sam nods slowly, knowing that Kara won't be swayed.

"So… Can I at least make you something to eat, and maybe some coffee?" He asks, having so much more he'd like to say, but there wouldn't be enough time for it all before her intended departure time.

"Yeah, that'd be good. I haven't had anything since yesterday." She replies with a small smile at her husband. "Leoben had made me something, but I killed his ass and threw his body out the window to escape before I got around to eating."

Sam gives her a small grin of his own. "Feel like sharing the details? Me and Tyrol blew up a bunch of the bastards at the launch bay earlier."

"Yeah, I'd seen that." She returns, her own smile widening. "You'd be amazed at the lethality of metal chopsticks…"

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"Are you sure this is a truly feasible plan here?" General Fitzpatrick inquires as those assembled in Adama's quarters finish listening to Helo and Athena outline their plan for rescuing those left behind on Earth, the American Military leader giving a sideways look to the Admiral in an attempt to gouge his reaction to the suggestion.

"It's risky, but it's the best idea that has been thought up so far." Adama replies heavily from behind his desk. "With how far morale has fallen in the past months, I don't think we have much time left before people start taking matters into their own hands."

"It'll work sir." Karl 'Helo' Agathon says from where he is standing against the wall next to his cylon wife. "It's a scenario that they taught at flight school on Caprica, and was used once or twice during the first war."

"Well that does my people little good then, they were never at your flight school, and while'n they're good at what they do, aside from the brief skirmish before we fled, none of them have ever gone head to head with the cylons, and no one period has gone head to head with an Antarian pilot. Not of those still with us, in any case." Fitzpatrick replies gruffly, pulling at his beard a bit as he mulls over the chances of success that the operation in question had.

"They wouldn't expect it, so we'd have that working for us." Riley chimes in from where he sat on the couch.

"The cylons wouldn't, no." Lee voices his agreement, although it's brief with his next words. "But none of us really know what the Antarians pilots have been taught, or even the maneuverability of their fighter crafts. I'm going have to veto, much as I want to get both of our peoples off Earth."

"I vote yes." Riley voices, knowing that Buffy would beat the shit out of him if yet another one of these meetings ended with a standstill.

"I say yes as well." Sam Finn echoes from beside her husband. "We can't afford to waste any more time."

"Nay." General Fitzpatrick intones, not sounding the least bit happy to having to say so. "My son and daughter are down there, and I cannot risk their rescue chances on this plan. If we fail, then there will be no one left to get them or anyone else off the planet, let alone protect what remains of the fleet."

"So.. two for, two against." Lee comments, looking around the group. "Looks like you get to decide Dad."

William Adama is silent for a long moment, considering the option laid out in front of him by Helo and Athena over in his head, while the others wait for his answer, or decision as it would be. Finally he gives a slow nod.

"Mr. Agathon, please put word out to the pilots and the civilian leaders that we have come to a decision, and will be heading back to Earth as soon as we can contact our people there to expect rescue within a week." The Admiral says with his gravelly accent. "Tell them to step up training exercises for the next few days in preparation. Gods save the rest of humanity if this is to be our final run. We're going back."

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Chapter II, Part II

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-Cylon/Antarian Earth HQ- ~ Still Oct. 3

"There." The cylon model known as Brother Cavil spoke, pointing out the barely discernable figures of James and Ava on the grainy security camera footage that had been pulled from the archives following the bombing of the landing bay.

Cavil pulls back from the monitor to allow the others present to view the recording, and when Tyrol and Anders are seen coming out of the building as he speaks again.

"I recognize all four of them; Galen Tyrol, Samuel Anders, James Foley and Ava Carver. They're getting bolder with their attacks." Cavil announces grouchily, and turns to face Kivar where he is sitting on the couch, decked out in his Antarian royal garb, colored red and gold. "Carver is the biggest problem, her abilities can affect any of us as if we were mere puppets."

Kivar is silent for a moment as he looks at Cavil, then to the Six-Caprica and the Doral standing with him. "Well, I don't want her dead. With her clone gone, she must remain alive so I can continue to control the rebels back on Antar and the other four planets in the Empire. They all are under the assumption that the Royal Four will one day return, and until I can get them all in one place for a public execution, I NEED her breathing. Arrest her if you must, throw her in the bowels of the detention center with the other one, torture her, I don't care. Just don't kill her."

The Alien Warlord pauses for a moment before speaking again. "Doesn't matter to me what happens to the other three."

"We didn't come here for this." All present can hear the mutterings from Caprica-Six, sitting on the couch against the wall opposite the one Kivar is seated on. The statuesque blonde sits rigidly with an unhappy look on her face, as she looks at Kivar, then to where Cavil and Doral stand by the monitor displaying the security footage that had been captured outside the ruined landing bay. "We came for a new beginning, to co-exist with the humans of both the Colonies and Earth."

"That may have your plan, my dear, but it never was and never will be mine." Kivar intones with a slight bit of irritation in his tone. "I only aided you in conquering Earth to get my hands on the reborn royals, what happens to the scum that originates from this backwater planet or the Colonials you have been pursuing for years are not of my concern."

"Nor should it be hers, but we just can't seem to program it out of her." Doral adds with his usual smug voice, and Caprica-Six throws him a death glare.

"It will be a cold day in hell before I or any of my copies let you do any bit of tampering with my coding Doral, so keep fantasizing you little slug." Carpica snaps back, her distaste for the Four evident.

"Enough of that, both of you!" Cavil roars suddenly, the elder-appearing cylon model One having no patience for the petty squabbling between the other two cylons. Doral gives a stiff nod in reply, and the Six looks away to glance out the window before the faux-priest turns his attention to Doral. "Have Baltar issue arrest warrants for Foley and Carver, I want both of them in the detention center by sunrise tomorrow."

"What about Tyrol and Anders?" Doral inquires, unsure as to why the other two insurgency leaders weren't also being charged.

"Let them be for now, they're both too high-profile among the Colonials. Foley and Carver are lesser known, and won't be as missed." Cavil replies, mulling things over as he thinks about how to punish them instead. "Have Tyrol's wife… Callandra and Jean Barolay arrested instead. Call it collusion with the insurgency, we all know both are heavily involved anyways. That'll throw them into chaos enough for us to not have worry about either of them taking action for a few days until we can come up with a more permanent solution to the problems they pose to us."

Doral nods and strides past Cavil and across the room to leave, giving Caprica one further look of scathing as he goes, to which she gives a one-fingered salute in reply.

"Charming." Kivar speaks up with a smirk as he watches the interaction between the two unfriendly cylons, and draws the gazes of both Caprica and Cavil as he stands to his feet. "Well, I should really be going. There is a summit meeting between the Five Planets in four days time, and my presence there has been requested."

"You're leaving?" Cavil inquires with a bit of incredulity in his tone, not liking when he didn't have information ahead of time.

"Only for a couple weeks, I'm sure you can understand duty and all. I'm not about to lose my throne over waiting around for something real to happen." Kivar replies with a shrug as he pulls his cloak shut around himself. "I will leave Nicolas, Rath and Vilandra at your disposal, and in charge of my end of things, at least until my brother arrives in a day or two to oversee things. I trust that it won't be of any real issue to you, and besides, you'll still have the Circle of the Black Thorn and their armies backing you."

"No, we should be able to keep a handle on things getting too far out of control." Cavil replies tightly, secretly holding a real fear of the empowered Antarian king. "I just would have liked to be informed of pending matters and departures beforehand."

"I'm telling you now." Kivar replies, not really caring about the feelings of the machine-man. "I didn't tell any of your cohorts either, if that helps any and I'm not withdrawing my support or any manpower to the effort here aside from the crew of the ship that will be bringing me to Antar for the summit, so it matters little in the end anyways."

"Fine." Cavil grumbles out and turns away to face the monitor once again, as it begins to replay the events that took place earlier in the day.

"Would you care to accompany me dear, get away from the pesky Mr. Doral?" Kivar inquires of Caprica as he turns his gaze on her, and she looks up to meet his. "Antar is beautiful during the winter season."

"As appealing as that sounds, I must decline. I have a feeling I will be needed here." The blonde cylon replies, with just a tinge of regret. She'd heard stories of Antar from a number of the soldiers that had come to Earth with Kivar, and secretly desired to go there some day, hopefully with Gaius if she could manage to keep the scientist turned Colonial President alive that long. But that would not be today. "I will, however, accompany you to your ship." She adds, rising to her feet and interlocking her arm with Kivar's own as he offers, and leaves with him the way Doral had departed, leaving Cavil alone with his thoughts as the sun began to descend outside the windows of the building that the little meeting had taken place in.

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iD'Anna having the same dream that had been plaguing her the past couple nights.

It has to mean something, the blonde cylon thought as she made her way up the steps to the dome-like structure nestled between two mountain peaks. A look at the night sky above lets her know that she's not on Earth, the constellations aren't in the proper alignment for that. She kept her eyes in front of her as she ascends the satirs, which as she gets higher and closer to the dome structure, the stairs get more and more treacherous and in greater states of disrepair. Each of the previous times, she'd failed to make it to the top before she'd awoken.

It's a bit of a hike, but she finally makes it to the top this time, and stares up at the doors that lead into the structure for a long moment, before she approaches the barrier. She tries for a few moments in vain to force open the doors, but to her irritation they will not budge.

"They won't open. It's not yet time." A female voice floats over on the wind to where D'Anna is standing by the doors, and the cylon model number three looks over to see a girl in her late teens. The girl has wavy chestnut hair and grey eyes, and is clad in a uniform unlike any of those D'Anna had seen prior, not of the Colonials or Earth, or the Antarian's either.

"You shouldn't be here either." The girl speaks again, slowly coming closer to where D'Anna stood, and the cylon turns to face the girl fully, wary of the girl on the off chance the girl was one of the slayers. Against most humans, she would scoff and write off as a non-threat, but she held a begrudging respect for slayers, following her 'death' at the hands of Faith Lehane when she had been brought into the detention center just over a month prior.

"Who are you to tell me where I should or shouldn't be?" D'Anna rebuts, starting to wonder if this was possibly more than just a normal dream.

"Who I am is not the question that you should be asking, but who are you." The girl inquires cryptically. "The answers you seek lay inside, but you are not ready to see. You must prove your worth first, and then shall you be granted access to the Citadel."

"How do I prove my worth, then?" D'Anna demands, unused to not having information right away, it made her feel disorganized and a bit inadequate.

The girl is silent for a long moment, her expression passive as D'Anna stares for several long moments, before finally speaking again.

"Find the child, protect her from the dark one, and return her to the artificial mother and natural father." The girl intones, her words almost too soft for D'Anna to hear against the wind. "Then shall you have entry to seek your answers. Seven-Five-Seven-One."

"What?" D'Anna is about to say, before a loud rumbling is heard overhead and she looks skyward to see the sun beginning to implode. Right before she can be burned up by the heat and fire. /i

D'Anna shoots up in the sweat-soaked bed that she'd been slumbering in, her breath ragged and uneven for a couple moments as she struggles to regain wakeful coherency. Her eyes dart around the dimly-lit room, searching out for any hidden danger waiting to spring out at her, but finds herself to be alone.

With a small sigh, she begins to go over the last moments of the dream, when her body suddenly goes rigid and she blinks a couple times.

"Hera." She whispers, her mouth opening in an 'o' of stunned surprise, having thought the child to have died years ago, following a report from the Cavil that had been hiding in the Colonial fleet prior the discovery of Earth. "The child lives…" She adds to herself, feeling a bit in awe that 'God' would gift her with such knowledge.

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"How can they just sit there and enjoy tea as if everything is normal?" Isabel Evans asks of her brother, sister-in-law and best friend, Drs. Max and Elizabeth Evans, and Kyle Valenti respectively, as all four sit around a small table in an isolated section of the med-bay for the staff to relax during breaks.

Isabel's attention and comment is toward Rupert Giles and Dr. Sherman Cottle, both of whom are sitting in Cottle's 'office', right in the former alien princess's line of sight about a couple dozen yards away from the small group of Roswell natives.

"Everyone's had different ways of coping Isabel, just let it go okay?" Max pleads as he realizes that his sister's tone meant she was close to going on the warpath.

Next to him at the table, Liz nods, the woman who'd once aspired for scientific greatness not looking to add to the bad public view that the majority of the Unified fleet held towards both Cylons and Antarians. Maybe she and Kyle hadn't been 'born' as such, but following their healings, both were just as different as the Hybrid siblings, and Liz secretly feared that they would be held responsible for the events that had occurred on Earth four months ago by angry Colonials and Earth citizens looking for payback. Kyle for his part, just looks mostly bored.

"He's the president, Max. He could at least pretend to give a shit." Isabel continued to grouse, her eyes shifting from where Giles and Cottle sat in the office, to meet her brother's gaze. She holds his gaze unflinchingly for a couple moments, and then almost deflates under the gaze of the former Antarian king. "I just miss Michael and Maria is all, they should be here with us." She finally says, her voice softer.

All three fix her with sympathetic looks, and it's Kyle who breaks the silence finally.

"I wouldn't be surprised if something happens soon, the Adamas, Fitzpatrick and Finn all know that time is running out before people start taking matters into their own hands." The ex-jock says, taking a sip off the coffee tin in front of him as he pauses. "Heard rumblings among the pilots over on Glory, a few of them are thinking to take an unsanctioned trip to Earth and do as much damage as they can to whatever ships Kivar and the cylons have there. Doubtful that there aren't similar groups forming here and on Pegasus and Liberty. If only out of desperation, something will happen soon."

"Have they even been able to make contact with anyone we left behind?" Liz asks, not really one to keep in the loop as far as the military action went, preferring to stay in the med-bay working as a doctor alongside Max, even with the war going on around them, she did her best to remain a pacifist.

"Not that I've heard." Kyle replies with a shrug, also wishing that something would happen soon, as secretly he was one of the pilots planning on taking action. Mostly he just wanted to know if his father was still alive or not.

"Finn might have let slip that there was a brief contact with Angel." Isabel says offhandedly, as she suddenly remembers the tense conversation she'd overheard about a day before, outside the CIC on Glory between Finn and Miller. "Got the impression neither of them is a big fan of the guy."

"Well, that's something at least." Max remarks after he finishes off is own coffee. "Let's just see what goes down the next couple days, and whatever plan the military leaders come up with, we'll lend our support to, and hope for the best. At this point, there's not much any of us can do otherwise."

None of the others respond to his words, all of them finding the logic in that, much as they were all impatient to re-unite with the missing members of their small group.

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Dinner had been largely uneventful for the Tyrol's and Faith, and they'd just finished up when there was a knock on the front door of the small 'shanty-house' that the Tyrol's used as their residence.

"I'll get it." Faith offers, getting up from the table as Galen and Cally remain for the moment. The de-powered slayer making her way over to the door and opens it to find James 'Jammer' Lyman standing just outside, and looking more than a bit relieved as he turns to look at her.

"Ah, good. They did let you out then." Jammer comments as Faith steps back to allow him entrance, and the former Galactica deckhand comes in.

"Yeah, just this morning." Faith replies as they walk down the short hall to the Tyrol's kitchen.

"Good to have you back LT." Jammer adds as they walk into the room, and he gives a nod to Galen and Cally. "Chief, Cally."

"Jammer." Galen nods back, getting up and retrieving a device out of the back of one of the cabinets under the sink. He places the device onto the table, and presses a button. A soft beeping is heard and then the buzz of static as the device blocks any recording or monitoring devices that might have been hidden by the enemy. Faith looks perplexed for a moment before recognizing the machine as an Antarian frequency interference module that had obviously been stolen from one of the alien soldiers.

Jammer also apparently recognizes the device and gets down to business immediately, not having long before he'd be missed for duty with the EEA, and might be compromised as a double agent, working for the insurgency.

"I spoke to Gaeta a couple hours ago, he said that he'd gotten the codes needed to trick the Antarians into thinking that their home world is under siege by one of their other enemies. Kara has them now, and she's out of the detention center, killed the Leoben that was holding her. One of the Simon's found the body, and they aren't to happy about it."

"Kara's alive?" Galen questions, a relieved grin coming over his face when Jammer nods.

"I didn't find out until a few hours ago, seems that the Leoben in particular is obsessed with her, and more than a few of the Cylons and Antarians both were unaware that she was even there. She killed the Leoben maybe six hours ago, and no one in their camp knows where she went. Gaeta told me he instructed her to get the codes to Angel, that they could use one of the raptors to bounce the signal off the moon and make it look like it came from Antar."

"Sam. She'd have gone to Sam first." Cally comments in regards to Kara's whereabouts, after a moment of silence. As she speaks, her hand unconsciously drifting to the collar fastened around her throat as it begins to make her skin itch, but drops it as she remembers the dangers of tampering with such.

"I'll head over that way after we finish up there, see if she's still around." Galen says decisively, wanting to ensure that those codes got to where they needed to go, and weren't allowed to fall back into enemy hands. The departure of the Antarian forces would severely diminish the enemies' number and would be highly useful in allowing Galactica and the other battlestars a window of relative quiet to jump back and get everyone off the mostly dead planet.

"I shouldn't stay much longer, the bastards have been even more paranoid and watchful since Gaeta got caught, it's only cause they put me on detail bringing food to prisoners I was even able to get word from him." Jammer says, looking down at his wrist watch, which read 6:42 pm.

"You have access to the prisoners?" Faith suddenly questions, her interest piqued at who else was still alive down there. "How often?" she adds, almost demanding.

"Couple times a week." Jammer replies, without missing a beat. "They got a couple of us on rotation, and I'm working on trying to get assigned to shifts as a regular guard."

"Any chance you'd be able to get a list of who's down there, and how bad or well off they are?" The Slayer-Pilot dubbed Nightshade requests, and Jammer gives a slow nod.

"I can see what I can do, but I won't be able to get close until the day after tomorrow." Jammer replies, and Faith gives a stiff nod.

"It's better than nothing." She says a bit dismissively, waving the deckhand off as he starts to apologize it would take that long. Once she was impatient and would verbally attack the guy for length of time, but she knew well enough he was trying, which was more than she could say about the real traitors of the Earth Enforcement Agenda, where Jammer was working undercover.

"Well, it's good to see you again and all Lieutenant, but I really gotta get going, fore the frakin toasters catch wind that I'm really working against them." The ex-deckhand says, and gives a quick nod to everyone before leaving back out the way he and Faith had come in.

Faith, Galen and Cally stand slash sit around for a long moment, the latter in Cally's case, the only one still seated at the table.

"I should go, get over to Anders' and see about Kara, hopefully can get back before the curfew." Galen remarks, rubbing at his beard as he looks between his wife and Faith. "If I'm not back by the curfew, I'll be at either Xander's or the Tigh's and will see you in the morning. LT. if you want to stay here over night, feel free to."

Galen walked back over to where Cally sat and gave her a brief kiss on the lips, his love and concern for her apparent in his eyes. "I'll be back in the morning at latest." He promises, hoping it would ease her oft-voiced concerns of Galen getting himself really hurt or even killed on one of the Insurgency ops, even if had dwindled in repetition as Cally herself got further and further entrenched in the activities of the Insurgency, mostly helping with putting bombs together.

"Be safe." She says in a near whisper as Galen pulls back and prepares to leave.

"Always." He replies, his voice a more normal level, that Faith could hear too. "I'd tell you both to be careful, but I really kinda pity anything that might come through that door if it ain't friendly."

"Yeah, they'd get a nasty surprise for sure." Faith mutters, her tone a bit dark and holding an eagerness to do some damage to the bastards who'd held her in captivity for over a month.

"Try to leave the hovel salvageable, please." Galen requests with a chuckle, leaving Cally's side as he made his way for the door. All in all, he wasn't too worried about the pair of slayers. Even de-powered with the collars, both were resourceful and more importantly strong women.

They'd survive this whole thing, he knew that for a fact, and wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if it turned out that Faith and Cally were too stubborn to ever die. He hoped that would be the case, that neither would ever give up the fight.

To Be Continued….


End file.
